The University of Virginia’s Screen Reader Series offers practical, eye-opening video demonstrations that reveal exactly how screen readers interact with digital content. Through real-time audio examples (using NVDA), the series highlights common accessibility barriers in tools like PowerPoint, Canvas modules, and PDFs—such as missing headings, undescribed images, unclear links, and poorly structured tables—while clearly showing the simple fixes that make content navigable and meaningful for assistive technology users.

By experiencing the screen reader’s perspective firsthand, content creators, faculty, and instructors can better understand how proper tagging, descriptive text, alternative descriptions, and logical structure not only ensure compliance but also create a more intuitive and user-friendly experience for everyone.

These short, focused demonstrations are an essential resource for building more inclusive digital materials at UVA and beyond.

Videos courtesy of McIntire Media and Design

PowerPoint Accessibility — Screen Reader Demonstration

PowerPoint Accessibility — Screen Reader Demonstration Transcript

Brooke Thompson: Now we’ll look at a PowerPoint. Once again, we are not going top to bottom, left to right, and reading every single thing on the page.

Screen reader audio: Title, placeholder shape, environment. Object, placeholder shape, obscured. Text frame, https://earth.org — “the green dilemma, can I fulfill it?”

Brooke Thompson: On this specific PowerPoint slide, the image was completely ignored. It acknowledged that there was an image, but we know nothing about it — we don’t understand why the image is placed there or what it is even about. We also have a URL as the content. In some cases, URLs on PowerPoints can be very beneficial. Other times, we really need them to just be linked text. Use your best judgment on why you’re placing it there and whether the user actually needs the full URL or just a link to it.

Now we’re going to look at a PowerPoint that has these slides somewhat remediated.

Screen reader audio (remediated version): Title placeholder shape, carbon emissions. Obscured text frame — according to 2019 data, training an AI model leaves 626.2 CO2 emissions. Text frame, https://earth.org. Object placeholder shape — bar chart comparing CO2 emissions footprints in thousands...

Brooke Thompson: On this slide, we are once again told what the slide title is — carbon emissions. But now, instead of going straight to an unmarked image, we have context on the page about what the image is about. We know that according to 2019 data, there are some CO2 emissions figures and how they relate to what the user needs to know. Underneath that, it moves on to the next element in the reading order, which is the URL. In this case, the full URL is important to have visible on the page rather than just as linked text.

The image on this page also has a description that connects the user back to the content already provided, offering an additional explanation of the importance of that image. Regardless of why your images are on your PowerPoint, you should always include additional text — called alternative text — to explain the importance of those images in your slides.

Canvas Module Page — Screen Reader Demonstration

Canvas Module Page — Screen Reader Demonstration Transcript

Brooke Thompson: Let's look at a Canvas module page. I have NVDA running on my PC. We are going to go through the different elements, but we are not going to go line by line. So you might see and hear the screen reader skip or cut off sentences. 

Screen reader audio: Out of list, main landmark, clickable, heading level one, accessibility training page. Universal design, A241. Universal design means we design learning materials... 

Brooke Thompson: On this page, we heard it announce things, but it didn't tell us if there were headers, and all of the links either said "here" or it expanded upon them to read out the full URLs. Those things are not very helpful for our assistive technology users. So let's take a look at a remediated, or corrected, version of this course. 

Screen reader audio (remediated version): Clickable, heading level one, accessibility training page — remediated. Heading level two, universal design. Heading level two, why it matters. List with eight items: visited link, brief overview, links to an external site. Visited link, fundamentals/accessibility intro, links to an external site. Download the file link, udlguidelines.pdf, button download udlguidelines.pdf... 

Brooke Thompson: This time when we read through the page, we heard all of the headers announced with their heading level — heading one or heading two. All of our links also had descriptive text associated with them, so it was not reading out the full URL for each link. 

These things are important because not only does it make the page more user-friendly for everyone, but it allows assistive technology users to navigate through the page more effortlessly. One way that screen reader users do this is by pulling up a list of the different elements on a page. This listing, called the elements list, allows them to navigate by links, headings, form fields, buttons, and something called landmarks. This allows users to skip around the page — not in a default top-to-bottom, left-to-right pattern — but based on what they are looking for. 

So if all of our links say "click here" or "here," users won't know which links they actually need. If we don't use proper headings, they won't know what text on the page is outlining the rest of the content. If form fields and buttons are not properly labeled, users will also have trouble navigating them. 

By having all of these structures in place, it helps all users — not just screen reader users — navigate course content more efficiently and in a more user-friendly way.

PDF Accessibility — Screen Reader Demonstration

PDF Accessibility — Screen Reader Demonstration Transcript

Now let’s open a PDF with accessibility issues. Screen reader users will always open their PDFs in Adobe Acrobat. This is because if they open PDFs in a browser, their screen readers are not always compatible with that software.

With Adobe already open, we are going to look at a PDF that is not remediated or corrected — it has some barriers. We are not going to read these PDFs from top to bottom, left to right. We are going to be skipping around and not having the screen reader complete every sentence.

Screen reader audio: ...the electricity grid provider that oversees electricity demand accounting for data center growth, the equivalent of eight large natural gas...

In this PDF, there were many different issues. Sometimes it would read the content, other times it would skip it. Sometimes it would describe what the images were saying, and other times it would ignore that the image even existed. All of these problems occur because the elements are not tagged. Tagging in a PDF is what allows a screen reader to know that content is actually there. This is critical for users to be able to access and process the content.

This PDF also has other barriers to accessibility. For instance, some colors do not meet color contrast requirements — such as light green on a white background. These color contrast issues will prevent people who can see from being able to access the content.

Now let’s look at a PDF that has been remediated.

Screen reader audio (remediated version): Heading level 2, Executive Summary. The University of Virginia... Graphic: a bar graph of UVA greenhouse gas emissions from 2009 to 2016... Heading level 3, page 4, table 1. Table with 38 rows and 4 columns...

As we can see in this remediated PDF, we were notified of the images and told what the content in those images was. We were also informed of the heading levels throughout the page. We also experienced what a screen reader user encounters when navigating a table, which is important because tables appear in a lot of PDFs and can be complicated.

Each table encountered with a screen reader must be organized in a clear row and column structure. In this particular table, it is very complex, with rows and columns spanning multiple cells. As you can see, when we properly tag the PDF, the screen reader user is able to access all of that content effortlessly.

It is important that we tag our PDFs, and there are multiple ways to do that. Ultimately, the goal is always to ensure that content is presented to screen reader users in a way that is simple and understandable.